Yes I checked at Dell and ran the diagnostics which found nothing wrong. I did find an Intel chipset to update and after I did that CheckDisk ran on reboot. That is what has been happening more often lately. Not memory dumps.

I figure if I have to format and reinstall I may as well try to fix it instead. Nothing to lose except time and I have lots of that! I also still have the original XP hard drive that I cloned to a bigger 250G drive last year. Maybe I'll learn something!

FYI, PC Pitstop does not make any changes to your system...it simply reports what it finds and offers suggestions on how to fix what is wrong.

If you haven't already done so, check the Windows Event Logs on your machine and see what it has been logging...

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer.

That is usually the best first place to start when you begin having issues, and will often tell you what is wrong.

Good luck!

I finally went back and ran PC Pitstop's Driver Detector and system check: This time IE ran it instead of griping about anything to download or run.

Basically it found a defragmented file, a few memory hogs like Google Update and some files that would require me to BUY something to remove. No sense in running it as shareware because it doesn't do anything...

I found the site to look junky and it had money written all over it! Thankfully all of the drivers were up to date. So far this adventure has been FREE!

I finally went back and ran PC Pitstop's Driver Detector and system check: This time IE ran it instead of griping about anything to download or run.

Basically it found a defragmented file, a few memory hogs like Google Update and some files that would require me to BUY something to remove. No sense in running it as shareware because it doesn't do anything...

I found the site to look junky and it had money written all over it! Thankfully all of the drivers were up to date. So far this adventure has been FREE!

PC Pitstop does have utilities for sale. However, the online "Overdrive" health check is free.

Interesting judgement on how their site looks "junky"...when it gives me useful information to troubleshoot an issue a client is having or I'm having, I don't worry about how pretty their site is.

burger,
Mate, you'll be wasting your (I assume) valuable time playing with registry and all these other time-sucking activities. What you are experiencing is exactly what I went through. You won't find peace until you uninstall that KB2862330 patch or recover with a recent image. You do create regular images I assume?!. If you don't START TODAY and you will have 99.9% less drama when PC goes belly up. Speaking from MUCH experience being SAVED by a recent disk image. Nothing like it in the world to be able to revert to a perfect PC in 5 mins!!!
Stop wasting time and uninstall the patch. Then get on with more enjoyable things . . . good luck, cheers, Brian.

Yes I checked at Dell and ran the diagnostics which found nothing wrong. I did find an Intel chipset to update and after I did that CheckDisk ran on reboot. That is what has been happening more often lately. Not memory dumps.

I figure if I have to format and reinstall I may as well try to fix it instead. Nothing to lose except time and I have lots of that! I also still have the original XP hard drive that I cloned to a bigger 250G drive last year. Maybe I'll learn something!

If you run chkdsk without any parameters, it will report if it's found any bad sectors and advise next command which will be a chkdsk /r if it has.

If this is the case, then back up any personal files before running it as data can be lost when it moves data to the good sectors.

I update XP every month. A simple registry hack makes your computer available for updates, that apply to your system, for another 5 years.
Open notepad

Copy and paste the folowing:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]

"Installed"=dword:00000001

Save in any convenient location.
Change extension of notepad file from .txt to .reg
Icon will change into a registry entry.
Double click file, or merge.
Run Microsoft Update and you it will install "pos"
restart and update.

I update XP every month. A simple registry hack makes your computer available for updates, that apply to your system, for another 5 years.
Open notepad

Copy and paste the folowing:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]

"Installed"=dword:00000001

Save in any convenient location.
Change extension of notepad file from .txt to .reg
Icon will change into a registry entry.
Double click file, or merge.
Run Microsoft Update and you it will install "pos"
restart and update.

There's already a thread on the forum which has a link to a warning not to use this hack as the updates could cause problems with a XP machine.

burger,
Mate, you'll be wasting your (I assume) valuable time playing with registry and all these other time-sucking activities. What you are experiencing is exactly what I went through. You won't find peace until you uninstall that KB2862330 patch or recover with a recent image. You do create regular images I assume?!. If you don't START TODAY and you will have 99.9% less drama when PC goes belly up. Speaking from MUCH experience being SAVED by a recent disk image. Nothing like it in the world to be able to revert to a perfect PC in 5 mins!!!
Stop wasting time and uninstall the patch. Then get on with more enjoyable things . . . good luck, cheers, Brian.

I'm not ready to declare the patch as a problem as I have not experienced any blue screens, just one incident of my USB ports not working correctly.

As to the XP problem, I checked the Scheduler and it did not have Check Disk scheduled, but it did have those WARNINGS for XP expiration so I removed them. That blasted MSE red box of danger is a pain in the ars! So far no memory problems, we shall see.

Well Scan Disk is still running on about half of the boot ups. Disk checking software is not finding any problems either. I'm getting more tempted to put the original hard drive back in! Supposedly it was going bad according to Acronis, but after I installed a new WD hard drive apparently a MIRACLE happened and BOTH drives were AOK. Incidentally Acronis also supplied the WD cloning software. Conspiracy?

I checked the Registry and the Scan Disk boot setting is OK too. The disk was just defragged too even though it did not need it.

Ok XP has expired but that has probably nothing to do with it . Troubleshoot this computer like any other version of windows , If you go to system restore and choose various dates will it show you something that drastically changed that you could backup from? If not run process explorer or ccs ( comero"s autorun . If any processes look strange right click on it and check it out on line. How is msconfig anything weird there, In control panel are all the drivers ok . In add remove programs anything strange in the list. Regular troubleshooting should find an answer don't get looked up in the fact that its XP Good luck Bob

See if Dell PC Diagnostics will find anything - much better and safer than registry cleaners or tune up programs.

If that cleaner found 2,000 registry errors, then open a command prompt (as an administrator on Win 7) and run a chkdsk /f and I would only trust CCleaner if I were to check the registry.

Ihave used "eusing registry cleaner", recommended by Windows Secrets, for years without any problems. Its actions are conservative, and I use it to prevent reg bloating caused by "session orphans".It is great for cleaning such debris from the reg of a PC that has never had such purging.

A friend with an eight year old Sony Vaio complained about sluggishness so I ran itm and it identified 7000+ orphan issues. After using it the machine ran better and had no problems caused by the cleaning. I also use CCC, just those two reg tools.

Well I decided to put the old hard drive back into the Dell and so far it is working well. Acronis complains about the drive's health, but I don't believe it after if found nothing wrong with the drive AFTER I installed a cloned WD drive. I had them both connected to do the cloning. When I restarted the PC, Acronis said everything was OK.

I used Wise Registry Cleaner to check it and fix a lot of errors found. It has a restore option too! It could not fix them all. If there are any other problems I will post back.